Certain devastating set pieces are utterly indelible – one particular standout moment sees Clare having to feign colonialist superiority over Billy to save his life in one humiliating, harrowing and incredibly tense act – but the film has moments of humour, humility and kindness too and the untamed Tasmanian landscape is both wild and stunning. The Nightingale is not without light and shade. Though this film deals with a particular period in Antipodean history – the Black War which saw the near annihilation of Tasmanian Aboriginals – it’s difficult not to feel some resonances now, which for some audiences might be a difficult pill to swallow ( reports of “violently sexist and racist” reactions from the movie’s Venice Film Festival premiere seem to thankfully have been isolated). As well as women and children, Aborginal men and convicts are treated no better. The first act brutality is only a taste of things to come in a movie which screams in no uncertain terms of the utter cruelty and entitlement of the British soldiers, who see everything and everyone who isn’t a white male in a position of power as entirely there to serve them and completely expendable after. The Nightingale is long, and it packs a lot in. That the film manages to touch the heart amongst such ugliness is much to the credit of its two leads, who bring nuance and warmth to characters you care deeply for by the film’s climax. It’s a rollercoaster and an ordeal at times (and the 136 min runtime doesn’t make it any more palatable) but there is beauty here amongst the pain. In this way The Nightingale is as emotionally raw and moving as it is upsetting. Despite her initial racism, Clare and Billy bond through extreme adversity in a way that proclaims that even in the worst possible situation imaginable even with the worst of humanity destroying anything remotely good there is always some hope, some compassion, even if it’s nothing more than the touch of a hand. Instead, the central relationship is that of Billy and Clare, and not Clare and the execrable Lieutenant Hawkins – played with singular abhorrence by the excellent Sam Claflin. Indeed, despite the genre leanings of Kent’s first film, The Nightingale has more in common with something like Walkabout, The Road or, perversely, even Green Book, though we are in no way suggesting fans of these films are necessarily likely to also enjoy The Nightingale. By that we mean the violence is not titillating and no one’s going to be punching the air by the end this isn’t an exploitation movie, though it is about exploitation in various forms. Much has been made of the extreme sexual violence throughout the film – and let us be clear, it is brutal, punishing and frequent – though The Nightingale shouldn’t be mistaken for ‘a rape-revenge film’.
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